Behind the Scenes of a TEDx Talk with Alli

Welcome to the Ali from Corporate Podcast. I'm your host, Ali, and today I have my husband Rico with me.

Hello. Hello, Hello.

We have a special topic, but first I want to tell you why you should be listening to this podcast and what you're going to gain from listening. So we've already done a few episodes and I find it quite fun. It's a new medium for us. This podcast is a corporate podcast and it's basically hacking the Office Life Survival Guide for Corporate Life. It's not easy. You don't learn everything in school that you need to survive the corporate world. So I have a book that just came out called Surviving Office Life. I also have a LinkedIn newsletter called Surviving Office Life. And this podcast does the same thing. We talk about topics that are prevalent in the workplace, like soft living, quiet quitting, underemployment, things like that. So today we're talking about a slightly different topic. Still relevant. We're Talking about my TEDx talk coming up.

Yeah, you've been really, really nervous about it and you are so, so worried.

Let's call it, let's call it excitement rather than nervousness. I'll tell you what the difference is for me, I have been prepping for this for six months more. I've been prepping for this since April. Right now it's December, almost December. The difference for me between nervousness and excitement. Nervousness comes when you're unprepared. Same with an interview. If you're about to walk into an interview and you feel very nervous, you in the pit of your stomach like you're going to puke, it might be because you didn't prepare, but I feel excited and little butterflies. Almost like I'm going to go on a roller coaster. And the difference is that I've been preparing. I have this thing fully memorized. I don't have any note cards. It's a 15 minute talk. I feel very passionate about the topic and so I'd rather call it excitement.

So let's wind up a little bit for these people. How big of a deal is it to get a TED Talk? How did you get one? Why is this? Why did you prepare so long for it? What, what are you expecting?

So first I want to correct you. This is not a TED Talk, it's a TEDx talk. So TED is global stage. And by the way, TED stands for technology, entertainment, design. I think the E is entertainment. It might be education. I'll check later. But I'm doing a TEDx talk, which is community based. So I applied to do a talk with the Hartford, Connecticut team, and I got accepted among seven other people. I believe they had over 300 applicants. So. So it's a big deal that I got this talk. I'd love to do a TED talk someday, but this is a TEDx talk.

Okay, and how did you. It's good that you clarified that. So how did you go about and get one? So how did you become a speaker?

So the first thing I did started years ago when I wanted to become a thought leader in my industry. I've noticed that it was very hard entering the corporate world. There are a lot of things that school doesn't teach you that I wanted to help younger people understand as they entered the corporate world. So I started making career development videos on TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. You name it, I'm on it. And my video started out as a crash course to surviving corporate. Like I mentioned before, after my videos started gaining a lot of traction, I realized, wow, there's a. There's a market for this. Like, people really need this knowledge. So since then, we've started a podcast, I've started a newsletter, and I've written a book about it. And now I'm giving this talk, which I'm considering the cherry on top of.

Okay, so how did you, like, get it? So did you just apply? Were there internal referrals? I know you talk about that in your newsletters. Is it through your network or did you just cold hardly apply? And just like, I'm Alison Peck, Ali from corporate, and I applied. How did you get one?

So I got one through networking. There is a wonderful woman. I won't name her in case she doesn't want to be named, but she was a previous TEDx speaker for Hartford. Her and I became friends online. And she said, hey, if you ever want to give a TEDx talk, I know that the Hartford team, I could recommend you. You'd do great. You'd be a great person to do a talk. And I didn't really think about it for more than a few minutes, and I said, okay, I'll do it. So she recommended me. I still had to apply, and I still had to interview. And I came up with the idea, the title for my talk, a few talking points, kind of the outline of what my talk was going to be about. And then I waited to hear back. And sure enough, I'm not sure how much of their acceptance of my application was based on her recommendation. I'm hoping not too much, but I know that means a lot. So I'd like to think that it was a valuable topic that people want to hear about and that's why they chose me.

Okay, yeah, I can see that, that networking is a huge part of, you know, getting gigs like that. Because you were one, you were like seven in 300 that got accepted. That's a huge number. Congratulations.

Eight. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. So my follow up question to that would be how, how would somebody that, that dreams about being a TEDx speaker or trying to get into public speaking? That's like, oh my gosh, I've always wanted to do that. So what's like a step guide to it? So how can you start off with becoming a speaker at that?

Okay, so two things I would recommend. One, go to Toastmasters. Toastmasters is an organization where you can. They have them all around the country. They might even have them all around the world. I'll have to check. But Toastmasters is an organization that helps you with confidence in communication and public speaking. And you basically go to a community space. They have them sometimes twice a month and you go and you practice public speaking and they have different fun topics. Like okay, let's go around the room and you try to use, try to stand up in front of the room and use this word in a random speech for 20 seconds. Right now that's just an example. Sometimes they'll have you prepare something ahead of time and you'll read it for four minutes and you, it's a note, it's a judgment free zone. They also give you tips. Like one thing I've learned from Toastmasters is not to say thank you to your audience at the end of a talk because it takes away from your talk and you're providing value to your audience. So why should they be thanking you? Okay, so that's the first thing that I would recommend. Try going to Toastmasters to practice. The second thing I was, I would recommend is have a topic you feel passionate enough about to share it with the world. That will help motivate you when public speaking makes you nervous. When you're trying to work on getting speaking gigs and you are having trouble. It'll motivate you because you'll have your why and you'll have that passion to help motivate you forward into getting these speaking gigs. So that's, that's what I would recommend if you want to get into public speaking.

So okay, I gonna try that and then I just apply or should I build a social media following or should I just have an opinion that is so worth sharing that they're just gonna pick it up and says, yes, that is, that is a opinion that I think is worth listening to. And. Yeah. Would you think that I have to build, like an audience and like, like you?

No, no. You mean if you want to get a TEDx talk?

Yeah.

No. A lot of people that I am doing my talk with don't have a social media following, and so I don't think it's a prerequisite. But something that I've heard of people doing is you can apply to 50 different TEDx applications in one year and maybe one of them will choose you. The problem is, is if a bunch of them choose you, then you got to do a bunch of talks. I'm sure you can decline, but you can keep applying every year until you get it.

Okay, that's. That's super interesting. So let's look at the last six months. So you said you were preparing for this for like six months. What did you prepare? What, what's like the behind the scene? That's like, you know, like I would never think. I think as a presentation, I work on it for two hours and then I give the presentation or maybe it's five hours. What have you been prepping for six months? Yeah. Take me through that a little bit.

Sure. So the first thing I want to mention is that tedx Hartford gave me a speaking coach free of charge. His name is Ryan. He was a lifesaver for me. He helped me build my talk, he helped me practice my memorization techniques, and he also helped me understand the nuances of the TED speaking style. It's different than just giving a presentation at work or a sales pitch or a pitch to a venture capitalist. So TED is the phrase behind TED is ideas worth sharing. So in the application, they strictly said, you're not allowed to advertise something in your talk. You're not allowed to. You're not allowed to tell stories about yourself. Like only tell stories about yourself. So usually TED and TEDx talks, they have this ramp up where you start with a question. You start with something thought provoking that gets the audience thinking and curious. Then you build up. Maybe you share a short story, or you share data from a study or research, and then you build, insert your opinion, or you teach the audience some lesson, or you spread an idea worth sharing. Then you ramp down your talk towards the end, and you give the audience some actionable steps they can take to adopt your idea or learn more about it. So that's kind of the style. So back in April, when I applied, I think they took probably a month and a half to accept people. And then I met with my speaking coach. We've met almost once a week for the last six months.

Yeah, I know. I, I, I saw that. And I was wondering like, what are you guys talking about? And why, why does it need so much preparation when you can just go on stage for 15 minutes? You have hours into it, so hundreds.

Of hours, I would say, yeah.

And I'm, and I'm just like, so what, what, what did they teach you? And, and did you redo your talk? Like, did you rewrite it like 10 times?

Totally. So I started with an outline and then I did a bunch of research and I put in quotes, I put in statistics, I put in some quotes from articles, some quotes from famous people. I did my own research on social media. I've done beta test groups with some of my social media followers. I've logged some of my comments, put them in an Excel spreadsheet, made graphs from them. So I've gathered my own data, done my own studies and research, and then I had this outline and then I started to fill in the outline so that it was a 15 minute talk. And I changed it quite a bit. I ran it by some people that I trust and I value their opinion. And the talk morphed and evolved. And then about two months ago, I decided, okay, this is the talk I want to give. I'm done changing it. Then whenever I performed it for anybody, I said, I'm not looking for feedback to change my talk. I'm just looking for things you liked about my talk or things I could do with hand gestures or body movement, non verbal communication that I could improve on, not changing the words or the order of the sentences. And then I worked on memorizing it.

Okay, so this was, this was like a lot of preparation. So it was research, outline, and then it was practicing it. Then you got feedback from people and then at one point you're like, okay, this is done and I'm not going to ask people for any more feedback. I'm just going to say, hey, what can I improve in my body style? Gestures and memorization. So did you memorize your whole talk or did you just memorize keyframes? Because I feel like there's two different ways of giving a talk. You memorize like sentence, sentence by sentence, or you memorize ideas and then you basically make sure that it goes into this 15 minutes that you said.

Right, I did the former where I memorized every single sentence, every single word. I have hand gestures that I Have specifically baked into the talk at certain points. And I have certain deep breaths that I take to introduce new topics, new paragraphs. I have memorized every single word. I don't really trust myself enough with public speaking yet to be able to give impromptu thinking in front of an audience. I think I'll get there someday, but this time I decided to memorize every single word.

So I just saw a TV show online, and they, like, introduced pauses very creatively to create more drama, to make the talk more exciting. Did you do that, too? When you just said, you know, you're gonna pause? Hand gestures. Are they to create more engagement? Did you try to do that? Yes.

So I learned about comedic timing, comedic pauses. I have a couple jokes sprinkled throughout my talk, and I pause during the joke and after the joke to allow people to laugh. Hopefully, they laugh.

Yeah, let's hope that.

Let's hope so. Yeah. Pausing can make an awkward talk, not awkward, and sound more natural. So I believe that the pauses and the timing and the cadence that I have in my talk, that I have carefully manufactured into my talk will make it sound natural, like I didn't have the whole thing memorized. Hopefully.

Okay. Yeah. Because I saw you two days ago, and you were kind of, like, nervous about when you mess up a little bit or you met or you forget a word that when you do memorize the whole thing, that shouldn't happen because you memorize word for work. But when you want to do an impropt, you know, when you're thinking about something that might be funny at the moment, you can't really do that when you memorize the whole talk.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. So I. So I do get an. So there will be three monitors in front of me when I give my talk. One of them is a countdown timer from 15 minutes that starts blinking red when I hit zero. The second one is it shows what slides are behind me. So I also have slides I've created, and I have a clicker in my hand to advance them so I can see a monitor in front of me with what slide is behind me so I don't have to keep turning around. The third slide is an outline slide that I have. And on my outline slide, I have the first three words of each paragraph, and I have about 12 paragraphs. So what was your question?

So, no, I was just asking about how. Yeah, basically. Basically your answer.

Oh, if I. If I mess up on one word, it's going to. Well, no, I know how to start in the beginning of my talk. I can just look down at the outline and say, all right, next paragraph.

Because you're going to go by, like, by the first word of the paragraph, and you have 12 paragraphs. So you basically kind of answered that. So are you. Let me ask you this. Are you kind of worried about more about the clock, the memorization, the nervousness? What do you think is, like, the most crucial Allison thing that you're going to kind of like, mess up on, so.

I'm not going to mess up. I'm trying to.

We know that. But it's just like, what. What do you think the probability. What would you say the probability would be? Like, if you have to pick one of the three, you know, like, love, marry, kill, which one would you, like, say?

Okay, so I think I get what you're asking. So I. Lately, when I've been practicing my talk in front of people, when I mess up or forget where I am, I say audibly, oh, shit, I can't do that when I'm on stage.

No, you don't want to say that word yet. No.

So when I'm doing my talk for the real thing, if I have a brain fart or I forget where I am, I'm going to stay silent for five or ten seconds, look down at my outline, recall the last few words that I said, and then I can easily remember what comes next.

Okay, so you're worried about forgetting it. It's not that. For me, it be staying in that 15 minute that I see the clock winding down and I says, oh, my gosh, I still have two paragraph, and I have like 30 seconds left, so I need to talk really fast so I can, you know, so I can catch up. But that would, like, take away from me basically being able to present the idea that it deserves.

So I will be able to leave out a few sentences from the last two paragraphs of my talk if I need to. I also think it's okay if I go a little bit over the 15 minutes. So this will go on the TED YouTube channel, which has, I think, 35 million subscribers. And their stipulation is that your talk cannot be over 18 minutes.

Okay, so you have another three minutes of guideline that you can actually go.

Over and try not to kind of. So there's eight speakers on Sunday night that I'm doing this with. And the night has been carefully crafted with the timing of eight speakers. 15 minutes. Some speakers are going to take less than 15 minutes. I'm. I know I'm probably going to take 15 minutes and 45 seconds. That is the length of my talk when I pause, as long as I feel good pausing. So yes, it's a little bit over. Yes, the timer is going to be blinking right at me. I'm going to ignore it and just do my talk and yeah, okay, so.

I think we chewed everything through the how from how to get one, how you prepared and how things that could go wrong. Things that could go wrong. So now let's talk about the excitement. How excited are you? What are you doing about that? Because this is a huge thing for you.

Yeah, so I am very excited to share this message with the world, especially managers because actually did we talk about what my talk is about?

We have not, but we don't want to take away from the actual talk.

Okay. So I won't tell you what my talk is about. You can easily look at it if you go to the Hartford TEDx website or any of my social media or my website. So I'm excited to give my talk because I think it'll help the audience that I'm trying to target manage the people that my talk is about. That's giving a little teaser. But I'm excited to do the talk because I think that it can change the way that some people feel about work. And I think a lot of young people feel depressed about work and have anxiety about work and just hate the fact that they have to do this until retirement in their 60s or 70s. So I'm excited to be able to share my message with people in the hopes that it changes their lives in a good way.

Yeah, that is very, very nice of you to do that. And I think your talk has a certain controversy to it that's really benefiting because the younger generation does not see it as same as the older generation does. Can you elaborate on that?

Yeah. So I'll give you a little bit more info about my talk. So my talk is about managing Gen Z in the workplace and there's a big difference between boomers and Gen Z. There are a lot of similarities, but specifically how they work, managers and people in the boomer age range. You know, people who are a couple years away from retirement, they are not used to quiet quitting, job hopping or soft living, which are the three topics that my talk is about. Gen z people ages 11 to 26, but we're talking about people who are working so maybe 18 to 26, they see work very differently. They're more of the job hopping type, they might be more of the quiet quitting type. And so my talk is going to be about just the differences between the two and how they can thrive together in the workplace and work together in collaboration.

Okay, I can see that that's very, very interesting when you. When you look at it like that. So it's gonna help everybody, and hopefully you guys are gonna watch it. Dm, Allison, if you have questions. And I think we're gonna wrap it up for this episode, right?

Yeah. And if you're not following me on Instagram, I am going to fly with my husband, my friend, my sister, and my dad to Connecticut tomorrow, and I'll be sharing a ton of details about the behind the scenes on my Instagram stories. So head on over to Instagram, click follow, and come along on the journey with me. It should be really, really exciting.

Yeah. Hopefully you'll do this on the TED stage one day and have another idea worth sharing.

The big TED stage.

The big tech stage where we fly you out.

I would love that. If I could just skip the nervousness part and the heart. The heart palpitations part, that'd be great. But besides that, this has been a wonderful experience.

Come on, you're a. You're a pro. You shouldn't be that nervous about it.

You're right. Should being the operative word. I'm going to be fine, actually. I just. Actually just got my haircut from somebody who's a gen zer. And we chatted about this for a good while where I was getting my hair cut and she helped me feel less nervous because she said, what a great thing that you're doing for people. Try not to be nervous. Try to think of the value you're bringing to your audience, not how your audience is going to be judging you. I think the audience is going to benefit from this. They're going to be grateful. They're going to be appreciative. So I'm just trying to hold on to that in not, you know, the nervousness or what could go wrong. Because I think no matter what happens, I'll still get to call myself a TEDx speaker, even if I totally bomb it, which I won't.

Oh, come on, Come on, let's not go there.

No, it'll be good. It'll be good, I promise.

Okay, well, thanks for listening and please rate this podcast a five star review, or however much you think it is, engage with it, and we will see you in the next one.

See you later. Bye.